Jacob Halpern

Could you please consider carrying out some implementation in order to allow configuration of Amazon shipping information and enable accrual of order bonus points?

- The background/business case:

As many sellers will tell you, Amazon performance metrics are strict. Each 'perfect' order receives a score of 100. Orders with minor problems receive 0, moderate -100 and major -500.

One order with a major problem will cancel out five perfect orders. The total score is used to give a seller rating out of 100. There are seller rating brackets and if you drop even just a couple of points into the next bracket down this results in reduced buy box visibility and a subsequent decrease in sales.

It is possible to earn bonus points on orders, again the criteria is quite strict: 'Orders without problems that have valid tracking AND were delivered within three working days AND meet the minimum promised arrival date AND no refund or concession.'

If you meet those criteria you get 110 points for a 'perfect' order - 10 extra points. If you are doing a significant amount of orders as we are this can be a considerable number of points and could therefore act as a buffer against any orders with moderate and severe problems, keeping your seller rating and buy box visibility higher.

When I checked our Amazon account it appears the ONLY orders that we have received bonus points for are those which are Fulfilled by Amazon (Amazon FBA) we do not receive any for Fulfilled by Merchant (Amazon FBM) even though I am certain we meet the criteria set down.

This led me to question exactly how the shipping information was being passed over to Amazon..

- The issue:

If you take a look at an order which has yet to be dispatched and click 'confirm dispatch' the information that you would manually need to enter is:

When we process an order in Linnworks Anywhere then sync, Dispatch Date is todays date, Delivery Method appears to **ALWAYS** be set to Standard, Delivery Service matches the Postal Service name in Postal Services Methods and Tracking ID is the tracking number.

So the issue appears to be that Linnworks sets Delivery Method to 'Other' in the dropdown and enters a value of 'Standard', Amazon then doesn't know for example that our 'Hermes 2 Day Tracked' Delivery Method is actually 'Hermes Logistik Gruppe' or 'Parcelnet' as the carrier and so we are prevented from earning ANY bonus points on orders we fulfil ourselves.

- The solution?

Simply allow us to choose the information to be sent over to Amazon for 'Delivery Method'..

In Postal Services Methods we you could add an extra field 'Amazon Carrier' we can then enter in here what we want to be submitted back to Amazon as the 'Delivery Service' if it matches a predefined option then we could start to earn bonus points, if it doesn't then Linnworks will set'Other' and submit exactly what was entered for 'Amazon Carrier'.

This needs to be done on a per Postal Service basis as for example in our direct integration between Linnworks and UK Mail, whilst we have a postal service called 'UK Mail' that is used for all next day mainland deliveries, occasionally if we send further afield we have to use UK Mail 48 Hour or UK Mail 72 Hour Economy, if only the postal service name was passed over, we wouldn't be able to submit the correct Delivery Service for 48 Hour and 72 Hour deliveries via UK Mail.

Furthermore it would also be useful to have this for other channels e.g. eBay, as whilst Amazon call Hermes 'Parcelnet' or 'Hermes Logistik Gruppe' eBay simply call them 'Hermes' in their set of predefined options. If the correct Courier was submitted, then when the customer clicks on the tracking number in their order, it shows the tracking history without them having to leave eBay.

As it stands the postal service name is being passed over and whilst you can rename it to match what eBay call it, if you have more than one postal service for integration reasons (as above, UK Mail) it isn't possible as the postal service name needs to be unique.

I spent some time checking to make sure that this wasn't already possible in Linnworks Anywhere and it doesn't seem to be, we can configure in Channel Integration -> Amazon -> Config -> Shipping Service

Mapping but this doesn't affect the shipping information passed over to Amazon on sync.

I also checked with support via Live Chat.

Hope you can implement my suggestion as I feel I've explained why this would really help us and many of

your other customers!

Kind regards,

James.

50 people like this idea

M

Mark Aldous

said
over 3 years ago

This would require a backward mapping. Linnworks does actually provide shipping courier in the Order despatch file, however it attempts to map VENDOR field to the courier information expected by Amazon. As it turns out they very rarely match and there is no definitive list of accepted courier names provided by Amazon for us to supply.

m

mattprice99

said
over 2 years ago

Fedor, James has made a very valid point and this looks like a fairly easy fix. It is been over 6 months that this suggestion was put under review. Amazon must be able to provide a definitive list of courier delivery services to map to?

i

info

said
over 2 years ago

I agree this should be made a priority if the Linnworks data is damaging seller ratings. For example UK Mail in Linnworks is actually Business Post in Amazon (the old company name) and data missmatch is is also a problem for the customer as when not mapped properly it breaks the tracking link for the customer in their account and Amazon simply say 'Your parcel is on its way' for 'Standard' shipping orders.